Missiles are constantly evolving to become more effective yet easier to manufacture. In recent years, for example, certain types of missiles have used thrust vectoring to improve missile control and performance. The AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles manufactured by Raytheon, for example, commonly use a thrust vector control (TVC) mechanism that is mounted to the rear of the missile's exit cone to change the direction of thrust and thereby control the attitude or angular velocity of the missile. The TVC typically includes any number of vanes or other control surfaces that can extend into thrust gasses exiting the rocket motor to thereby change the heading of the missile. Thrust vectoring is also used in other types of missiles, as well as in rockets, jet aircraft and the like.
A challenge often arises, however, in properly orienting the TVC or other control surfaces of the missile during assembly. Generally speaking, it has been important that the control surfaces be precisely positioned with respect to the roll axis of the missile to allow for accurate control in the pitch and yaw directions. Typically, the need to precisely orient the control surfaces to the rest of the missile presents a significant challenge in manufacturing and assembly. In the case of the Sidewinder TVC mechanism, for example, the exit cone containing the TVC control surfaces is typically attached to the body of the missile using a non-threaded joint that is relatively bulky, complicated and expensive to implement. Other attempts to use conventional threaded joints to attach the TVC to the missile body have been met with limited success due to the level of precision needed to machine accurate threads. Even in such cases, shimming or other compensation was often needed during assembly of the threaded joint. Similar issues can arise in other settings, particularly where threaded joints are desired. A seeker assembly attached the nose of a glide bomb casing, for example, often uses a threaded or non-threaded joint that can be sensitive to the roll alignment between the seeker and bomb. Alignment uncertainty issues may arise in any number of other components and products as well.
It is therefore desirable to conveniently manufacture, assemble and operate the control surfaces of a missile or other projectile without sacrificing performance. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.